This invention relates in general to wireless communication systems, and more specifically to a method and apparatus for distributed arbitration of a right to speak among a plurality of devices participating in a real-time voice conference through a network via multimedia data packets having source identifiers.
Voice xe2x80x9cchatxe2x80x9d and voice conferencing can put high traffic loads on an internet protocol (IP) network. Voice over IP uses the well-known Real Time Protocol (RTP) to send voice data packets between participants. Most of the time only one person is speaking and the RTP traffic is reasonable. However, when multiple participants speak at the same time, the network traffic increases tremendously. This can saturate the network and result in unintelligible speech. The unintelligible speech then further adds to the confusion.
A prior art solution has been the use of a centralized entity such as a conference bridge. The conference bridge hears all participants, but transmits only one selected participant. This solution complicates call setup and is expensive. It also does not reduce the load of the voice data from all participants coming into the conference bridge. The problem becomes even more serious in a wireless system. When several participants speak at the same time the amount of traffic for a single participant easily surpasses the capacity of the wireless channel to the participant. Several prior-art solutions are available. One is the insertion of a mixer in the wireless infrastructure. Another is the construction of a centralized dedicated controller, such as the Dispatch Application Processor (DAP) in the well-known iDEN dispatch system. The iDEN DAPs make sure that at any time only one participant can speak.
Because centralized solutions are expensive and do not scale well, what is needed is a distributed solution to limit the amount of voice conference data that is allowed to enter the network. Preferably, the solution will allow only one speaker at a time to have the right to speak.